Design Project Delivery Product

Purpose

The purpose of the IFS Project Delivery module is to administrate and monitor a project's design, manufacturing, and assembly. A typical IFS solution with the IFS Project Delivery module contains the following:

IFS Project, to handle project information.
IFS PDM Configuration, to handle standard part and design information.
IFS Project Delivery, to handle the integration between your delivery project and the individual parts (project items) assembled in the project.
IFS Document Management, to handle the documentation in the delivery project.

The modules mentioned above constitute the ‘extended’ version of the IFS Engineering solution. In a complete installation, IFS/Distribution and IFS/Manufacturing should also be included.

Business Solution Interconnection

Below is an illustration of the interconnection between various main processes and the corresponding IFS modules.

Life Cycle Management Support

IFS/Project Delivery focuses on managing the product's delivery structure and its connections to delivery project activities. The module

• provides necessary information for the planning and execution of manufacturing, assembly, and testing.
• handles tagging, development of standard components, and serial numbers.
• supports the Life Cycle Management Philosophy and can be used in various phases of a delivery project, such as: tender, design, material procurement, assembly, testing and hand-over.

Use the module to formulate the product design, i.e., sketch a product using a combination of existing 'library components' and new parts developed for the project. You can copy activities and product definitions from any similar project to facilitate the design and tender processes. Project activities can be connected directly to the emerging delivery structure, providing a link for relevant information about the project plan to the delivery structure.

When the tender becomes a contract, the implementation project begins and the engineers can begin detailed plans for the product. The module supports material requisitions of long lead-time items as a parallel activity to the detailed project planning.

Once your delivery structure is established, you can obtain a complete Material Procurement List. This list is fed directly into IFS Distribution as material requisitions. The parts can be purchased or manufactured with the support of IFS Manufacturing. When assembly starts, the system tracks those parts that have completed the design phase and have been assembled, tested, or installed. Activities are connected to the product structure to accomplish this tracking. The As Delivered product structure gives a complete survey of the components of the delivery structure, e.g., parts, serial numbers, and structure. Complete documentation is linked to the appropriate object with corresponding tag number information. This information acts as an information base for future projects.

Overview of Main Processes

General

A delivery project can be seen as a number of processes such as tendering, design, material procurement, assembly, testing and hand over. Each process is project oriented and can evolve during the project. These processes usually work on the same set of data and can run in parallel.

Illustration of the overlap in duration of each process in the life of a delivery project.

Tender

The tender process helps you plan the costing of the product.

Using this solution, you can reuse information from other projects by copying activities, delivery structures, or selected parts to your new project. By using this composite of both existing and newly designed parts, you can quickly have a first version of the new product with the data available as you continue working in the detailed design phase. Cost for the complete delivery structure can be calculated at this stage for input in the price calculation.

Selected characteristics like total weight or total power consumption can be calculated on any level of the delivery structure. Projects or subprojects can be copied as well, using actual costs from earlier projects as estimated costs for the new project in the calculations.

If a similar part exists in other projects, you can select the best suited part by using a 'best fit search' on the characteristics that are of greatest importance for the function of that part.

Detailed Design

In this phase, you can add more detailed information, and parts and/or documents can be revised or replaced. IFS PDM Configuration can be used to create generic parts/designs that can be copied into the delivery structure. The delivery structure can also have a reference to standard parts in the IFS PDM Configuration module.

A plan of all project tags can be entered in this stage.

At this stage, the project plans must be further developed and the budget frozen if baseline analysis is required.

Material Procurement

All parts belonging to a requirement activity have a scheduled required date according to the start date of the activity. When you run the Material Procurement List calculation, you receive a complete survey of the total material requirement for your project including required dates. Calculation results are more accurate as assembly activities are added at a more detailed level.

When the design of a part or a module is approved, the material can be obtained by using standard functions for manufacturing the parts, reserving them from inventory or purchasing them.

Project planners can monitor the material requisition process.

Assembly

Requirement activities can be connected to the delivery structure. The activity's start date is used as the required date in the material procurement list. Functions from IFS Distribution are used in order to obtain the parts in time.

As the first parts arrive and the assembly activities are carried out at the project site, you can change status on your project items from designed to realized. Information regarding serial numbers can be added at this stage.

If the part design is in question, an Engineering Change Request can be entered in the system. By considering several requests and analyzing the delivery structure, an Engineering Change Order could be issued to handle all actions that must be taken.

Pertinent documentation can be attached directly to the serial number.

Testing

It might be necessary to assemble, test, and disassemble in house before moving the product components to the final site where assembly and testing is repeated. Activities and the status of these project items can be entered directly in the product structure.

Project Payment and Valuable Assets

At project completion, project payment is made. In addition to this asset, you also have the data in your system. This information has significant value if you are asked to deliver additional equipment, spares, or services to the project or if you plan to deliver similar products in the future.

Since the data in your system is perfectly suited for the IFS Maintenance system, your customer has the option to include a maintenance system as a part of the delivery. This maintenance system includes maintenance plans and schedules.

Terminology

The terms used in the help files are defined below.

Overview of Project Delivery Functions

This function is used to identify the delivery projects in IFS Project. Use this as a starting point to navigate to product and part information. Information in this function includes:

• A complete survey of all delivery projects.
• Fast access to more detailed information about delivery structure and project plan.
• A copy project function to duplicate a project.
• A function to transfer a delivery structure to IFS Maintenance.

Use this function to register your delivery project. The connection between the project plan and the delivery structure is registered here. You can specify tags and copy or insert the parts to be used. You can also generate and view the material procurement list, and send material requests to IFS Distribution. This function includes:

• Status management (state machine) for items and serial numbers. This enables you to effectively manage the design and implementation stages for each item.
• A survey of all project tags.
• A survey of all requirement activities to be connected to the delivery structure. These activities determine need dates for items. Note that the activities contain the estimated material cost from all associated items and their substructure.
• A flexible material procurement calculation results in a list of all project items needed, including their need dates. You can also group items by their part numbers, selecting those that are needed within a specified time interval.
• Requisitions sent to Inventory based on the Material Procurement List and including part number, quantity and due date. This information can also be grouped by part number.
• A modification of requisitions when necessary to the project and if allowed.
• A survey of all functions in the project.
• A graphical view of the function structure.
• A survey of all the spare parts in the project.
• Structure copy services from other delivery items or from standard parts.
• Mapping of functions to projects parts in the structure.

Use this function to view a survey of all defined serial numbers and which project serials are connected to manufacturer and supplier.

Use this function to view a survey of all occurrences of functions in projects.

Use this function to view a survey of all parts used as spare parts in projects.

This function lists the users that have not approved the current step for objects in the approval process.

This window is accessed by selecting the Project Item Info menu item in other windows. Use this function to maintain the delivery structure. The function includes the following information about a project item:

• A complete survey of one or more levels of the delivery structure including tag, serial number, and cost information.
• Cost information and calculation functions for all items.
• A technical characteristics attribute rollup for the item.
• A survey of standard structure (As Designed) with the delivery structure (As Delivered).
• The document survey for the item.
• A journal that contains information about the project item's status changes.
• A spare part list  that shows the total cost of the item's spare parts.
• The item's approval routing.
• The item's document requirements.

Functions for creating and deleting entire delivery structures are based on earlier projects or the standard structure. A report is available to display structure and document connections for delivery items.

Project Delivery Basic Data

Use this function to view the basic information including a list of the template parts in IFS Distribution and a survey of standard parts that can be used as a basis for serial numbers.

Integration with other modules

• Requirement activities (assembly or pretest) must be connected to the product structure. The Material Requirement calculation reports the parts that must be in place before the project activities can begin.
• IFS Manufacturing and IFS Distribution are used in obtaining the necessary material for the delivery project. Requirements can be transferred to these modules from within IFS Project Delivery.
• The material cost estimate for all items belonging to a requirement activity are transferred to IFS Project as planned material costs for that activity.
• The development of any documentation to be part of the delivery can be organized as document packages and connected to activities.
• Project tags, serial numbers and project items can have document surveys attached.
• The project structure, including functions, documents and spare-part lists, can be transferred to IFS Maintenance.